I read the whole thing. It's a dubious lesson. National leaders don't do things because of historical precedents. They do what they want, and dress it up in whatever historical precedents are available. Pro-Russian commentators have mostly justified the invasion by pointing to it as merely the restoration of a sliver of the old Russian empire.
The article doesn’t say that things were done because of the precedents. The article is a history of how this feckless US foreign policy got us to this point and how Putin is taking advantage of it.
It is obvious that precedents aren’t binding, or we would not be aiding the Islamists, while they are at war with us.